Easter Day, 17 April 2022, Austwick, Clapham, Keasden
A man is brutally executed by soldiers of the occupying forces. Fearing his body would be roughly disposed of and lost, a friend risks his own safety to negotiate with the military - and maybe there is money involved - to take the body himself. He struggles to carry it to a familiar burial ground, leaves it in a new tomb, seals the entrance. But after two nights, at daybreak on the third day, grieving friends find the entrance open, the tomb empty, the body gone. The men run away convinced that enemy soldiers have done this, too fearful of the risk of ambush and arrest to linger there. But like someone who can’t help but keep returning to the scene of a fatal crash with flowers and tributes to the loved one last seen there, a sole woman remains by the tomb, weeping.
We’ve heard stories like these daily since Russian forces invaded Ukraine on 24th February. A woman who has seen her loved ones murdered before her own eyes and had to bury them at the roadside with her own hands, now keeps vigil there despite the gunfire around her, lost in her trauma, grieving, weeping.
These tragic scenes are each the stuff of contemporary warfare; but the first story comes from scripture, from the evangelist John’s account of the death of Jesus. It’s almost unbearable to realise that events like these are universal, spanning time and place. As Edmund Banyard put it*,
One Friday in Eternity a man was hung they say,
A man was hung, but why the fuss, it happens every day;
Hung, shot or crucified, who cares, it happens every day.
One Friday in Eternity repeated every day.
If the sole woman remaining by the tomb, weeping, is a universal scene then so must be the next act in the gospel story. A man approaches Mary Magdalene. She turns around and sees Jesus standing there, but she doesn’t recognise him. He says to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she says to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus says, ‘Mary!’ She turns and says to him, ‘Rabbouni! Teacher!’
Of Jesus’ execution Edmund Banyard writes,
One Friday in Eternity that man was God they say,
If that is true - if God was there - it happens every day;
If God was sharing mortal pain it happens every day.
One Friday in Eternity repeated every day.
If these Friday events are universal then Mary’s encounter on the Sunday must also ‘happen every day’. Mary turns as she learns - from the teacher - that amid her grief she is awakening to an unexpected, radically new beginning. And from this we too may turn from our griefs and learn to find little resurrections happening every day.
We hear about them sometimes; they may even make the news: as weeping people turn to find comfort in an unexpected friend; as those bereaved by violence resolve to turn their pain into campaigning for peace; as exiles start life over in safe homes in new places; as a person’s brutalising anger melts into forgiveness.
It’s never immature to believe in resurrections; and it’s never premature to anticipate new beginnings, even in the darkest circumstances. For new beginnings start with weeping. This can be our hope in dark times. As we recognise that every day God shares our mortal pain, so every day, even in the deepest grief, we may awaken to new beginnings.
Note
*Edmund Banyard, One Friday in Eternity © Copyright 1972 Stainer & Bell Ltd.
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